Gods - ADG Episode 267

[@thejoin4687]

Back in the day, I deemed the control issues an essential and intrinsic part of the challenge! When it takes you five minutes to turn round, it really helps to be proactive! I eventually beat the game, after a lot of trial and error. And I must say, it was one of my most satisfying gaming wins.

[@Gimipork]

8yo me completed this game, in DOS, honestly don't see what's so difficult about it XD Part of the fun was figuring out how it worked, though I'm not sure I'd have that kind of patience as an adult. I appreciate the video though, it's interesting to hear different opinions as this was my favourite back in the day :P

[@lactobacillusprime]

It's rose tainted glasses that form many player's memories of this game. Its quite a frustrating game. Still fond memories of it. Thanks for sharing.

[@MortimerZabi]

I actually think a lot of older PC platformers only got a free pass because of the novelty factor. This is one of them.

[@shdon]

Great review. Explains exactly why this game never clicked for me. I remember the music and the graphics fondly, but that's it. What the Bitmap Brothers did with 16 colours is nothing short of amazing. But, the laggy controls and the incredibly convoluted manipulation of switches and items ruin it for me. I never had the patience to figure out why I couldn't progress anywhere and ended up watching a playthrough as well (quite recently in fact) to learn that I did have to pull the switches multiple times according to the prime numbers, except in months where a full moon fell on a Friday in which case only those switches whose index number fall in the Fibonacci sequence have to be triggered, unless Jupiter and Mars align in the northern sky.

[@jayminer]

I'm one of those Amiga fanatics who hates this game (and Shadow of the Beast), all flashy graphics but bad gameplay, and it moves at like 17FPS (that's every third frame at 50Hz). I've given it so many chances but I just think it's a bad game.

[@wizzel22]

At least we had fun with the artful graphics and the music from SotB was so excellent!

[@vonhapen1]

Despite its weaknesses, this one still catches me with its graphics and design. Right from the first time i played this one nearly 30 years ago on the PC.

[@gurriato]

I love how this game came to the Mega Drive and flopped massively, it really put it in its place. I used to have an Amstrad CPC, so I know how it is to have low standards, which is what happened to the poor souls who had to play platformers and run & gun sidescrollers on home computers. The bar was so much higher on console though that both reviewers and players didn't have to put up with this. A few other Amiga classics were ported to the 16 bit consoles and most of them suffered the same deserved fate.

[@BeyondTheScanlines]

Looking at things - the control delay really, really would be a source of frustration for sure. Let alone the reliance on secret discovery. It's a shame, as despite the lower vertical resolution available to them, the visuals are pretty much up there. But I guess it's that messy period for sure when it comes to ports, especially for Euro devs... who weren't quite as up there with tech skills on the PC side :)

[@Pixelmusement]

+hellfire64 Not that they didn't accomplish some impressive things with this port. The intro music I didn't play? Has proper conversions for ALL supported audio formats! :o

[@TheGreatCodeholio]

I can definitely say that whatever control issues were caused in porting to MS-DOS also made their way into the PC-98 port of Gods (yes, there is one!)

[@thepirategamerboy12]

And the PC-98 version has a really good version of Into The Wonderful despite not using any samples and actually has in-game music, unlike any other version that I know of besides the Genesis one. It uses PMD and the music was done by M. Kajihara himself. Oddly, though, the PC-98 version is sensitive to CPU speed unlike the regular DOS one.

[@TheGreatCodeholio]

@@thepirategamerboy12 Yeah, you have to crank the cycle count down to about 800-1000 to match the IBM PC port.

[@HighwayMule]

It was the Dark Souls of Amiga in 1992

[@rodrigosebastianpagano8198]

Finished the DOS version back in the day. I think we were in a different mindset in those times. The secrets in Gods are not THAT obscure, and be able to have little increments in each playthrought was great, once you have that password, well, you keep playing and trying. You could spend a couple of days or an entire week trying to beat a level, and that was fine. In modern times, this is unforgivable in a game. There are too many games, too little time, and we need to advance faster. Is not better or worse. Just is. When you play a classic like this, I think one have to put in that old mindset again.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Rodrigo Sebastián Pagano I only agree to that to a point, because memorizing what to do is one thing, but when you start losing lives because the game is not being consistent, that's not acceptable now and wasn't acceptable back then either. Even as a kid, if a game started robbing me of victories when I hadn't done anything wrong, I stopped playing it and just popped in something else. :P

[@DanZero77]

I'm glad to finally see this game here. I have a spot for this game and I completed the SNES port and got the remastered version close to the release date. There are more secrets than I could even be aware of. But I like it.

[@pagb666]

Was about to ask... But since you didn't get there... I remember this game always crashing at the beginning of World 4. I replayed this under dosbox not so long ago... And it also crashed at the beginning of World 4!

[@philscomputerlab]

Something interesting, with Sound Blaster you get no music during the game, only sound effects, but with Roland there is music and sound effects. This game also has scrolling issues on some graphics cards, specifically some VIA S3G Unichrome2 implementations. So it's a game I usually always run to check scrolling.

[@Pixelmusement]

+PhilsComputerLab Good to know! :)

[@bamdadkhan]

oh how i fraking HATED this game.. i played it on the amiga, and it sucked me in with its awesome music (the copyright mafia can suck it btw) and great graphics. but 30 minutes into playing it i realised it's artificially lengthened by how slow you move, how hard it is to hit something and how illogical the puzzles are. a perfect example of a game that could have been one of the greatest late side scrollers but ended up a huge disappointment. i hate games you can only 'beat' with a sour taste in your mouth and stone-cold determination. i want to enjoy the ride not endure endles suffering. so tl;dr this one is a steaming pile of goat dung not a cult classic and can rot in tartarus for all i care. xD

[@AmyraCarter]

*Dark Souls wants to know your location* lolz

[@Bunkerknacker_Retro-Nostalgie]

Thanks for the review. Tried this a few months back and got annihilated again and again and I just couldn't understand why I failed so hard. Even Volgarr gave me a cookie for remembering the proper way with decent controls. Glad it is not me, but the actual butthole of a game. Perhaps I am just getting old and don't want to cope with frustrating trial and error anymore if I can play something that is not a chore, but actually... fun or, dare I say, challenging.

[@KlausWulfenbach]

I was fortunate enough to try this game on my friend's Amiga after I had tried the DOS demo (I think it was on a coverdisk) and noticing that I liked it a LOT better on the Amiga, although I wasn't sure why at the time. Probably for at least some of the reasons mentioned in this video. Sadly, I never got an Amiga, but Gods was on my bucket list of games to get if I ever did get an Amiga for myself. Edit: by the way if you want to try a game that was likely inspired by the style of Gods but plays more like a Nintendo or Sega platformer, I highly recommend Million To One Hero on Steam. It's a Mario Maker style game which means that there's only a few official levels to play but thousands of community made levels.

[@gunarliebig]

Oh thank gods this is out!

[@ThommyofThenn]

This game looks awesome actually. cool animations

[@Pixelmusement]

+Tommy John Oh yeah. The art quality in this game is superb; no complaints there in the slightest! :B

[@ThommyofThenn]

@@Pixelmusement I recently set up a game id been wanting to play for years now and the controls are just awful. Difficult to remap for this game as well. I'm still enjoying it but the controls are slowing me down. :p

[@Enderu666]

3:40 It's actually something you can do on EGA, you can pick your 16 colors from a palette of 64. I think the reason it was rarely done by games is that there was some sort of compatibility issue when using an EGA card with a CGA monitor, though I don't remember the details. That, and the fact it wasn't possible on Tandy just made supporting it inconvenient.

[@Pixelmusement]

Not exactly. This was something I got wrong myself for quite awhile and only learned more recently, but the 64-colour palette EGA provides is ONLY available in when running in 640x350 resolution. VGA on the other hand alters the palette in a different manner and thus can do so in literally any video mode, including text mode. ;)

[@Enderu666]

@@Pixelmusement That would explain the only game I could remember changing the EGA palette. Lemmings had the menu in the higher resolution mode with pleasant colors but then switched to the 320x200 mode with the garish colors during gameplay.

[@intrinia]

Into ... the wonderful! I saw another video on YT claiming that GODS has a difficulty adjustment mechanic, which makes the game easier/harder depending how the player plays and which also works like a copyprotection, bc it makes the game incredible hard if pirated. Would really like to know if this is really true or not!

[@Pixelmusement]

+Intrinia There is no dynamic difficulty adjustments. The copy protection thing IS true for the Amiga version, but I don't know exactly what it does nor do I know if it happens in other releases. (Didn't seem like it was happening to me.)

[@ThommyofThenn]

Color fidelity and zone control is so cool what you can do with graphics. "how graphics work" on 8bit is a great video for us new to graphic design

[@simonbelmont3023]

Still waiting for a chance for you to make a Might and Magic review Xd

[@kertaspaper94]

I remember playing this on my cousin's computer. Didn't realize how bad this game is because I was probably 5-6 years old back then.

[@alex76gr]

Spot on presentation.

[@antzpantz]

I never finished this game in my early teens and never will. It's ridiculously frustrating!

[@TheJamieRamone]

Weird u had so much trouble. I got it from my cousin as it was installed on the HD my uncle gave my dad and, on EGA, it was 1 of the best games BY FAR on my (ahem, "family's") computer. Once u get use to the heaviness of the jumps and the restrictions i.e. only jump forward, how the inventory works, yada-yada-yada, it's not too hard. True, it's no cakewalk, but it's not so impossibly hard that it takes so many hours as u did to clear the 1st level. The up-side is that it has great replay value :D As for the secrets, I disagree: u don't need 2 know where they all r 2 get anywhere. And I do mean secrets, not puzzle solutions. For example, u can ignore the 4 switches in the middle of the 1st level entirely and still get thru. In fact, I gave up entirely on the hidden platform to access the push button on the wall at the top of the ladder at the end of the 1st level for YEARS on end. I originally missed a ton of secrets and got to the last level, though it did take me almost a year 2 do that.

[@JomasterTheSecond]

The moment I started up this video and didn't hear Into The Wonderful... I knew something was wrong.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Jomaster The Second It IS in there though, with proper conversions for every audio format supported, but given the legal state of it and how it's missing from the Remastered edition I didn't want to risk playing even a second of it. :P

[@JomasterTheSecond]

@@Pixelmusement I totally understand. Copyright on KZbin is a big problem and all. ; ~ ;

[@miikasuominen3845]

It's interesting, this was my childhood. I had an Atari ST back then and also played these with Amiga. Bitmap Brothers were kinda posterchilds at that time (well, in europe and UK at least). The polished look of Xenon and most of their games was a big thing back then. I never really liked much of their games... Well, Xenon (1) was something that was in my mind excellent looking game and though it isn't a very good shooter, I loved to play it with my ST (and Speedball 2 was excellent). And now when I look their games, I even think that they were not such a good programmers either, than what I though back at the day. Though I love their pixelart style still! Their games had terrible slowdowns (even on Amiga), like the praised Chaos Engine... Am I alone, with these thoughts about them? Generally, European platformers were the cancer of platformers ;) Thank god(s), they got better at making them later ;)

[@Jarumo76]

Ever tried 'Cadaver' by The Bitmap Brothers ?

[@miikasuominen3845]

@@Jarumo76 Yes, their isometric adventure. Looking like the Ultimate's Speccy games. People have praised that one, I'm not a fan of the genre, so I have just quickly tried it sometime in the past...

[@wizzel22]

Speedball was their best game.

[@RoninCatholic]

Any knife with a guard on its hilt is a dagger, and shuriken is the proper word for throwing stars so in those cases the manual isn't incorrect, just using different synonyms. Referring to wall-ignoring lightning bolts as spears is still wrong though.

[@Ribulose15diphosphat]

You can actually change the EGA-Palette. The 16 colours are references into 6 bit RGB-Space. Actually commander Keen does this to fade to black and to dim the light in the second game. This is related to the changing of the overscan colour (it is the same IO-Port, but a different register).

[@Pixelmusement]

Dunno where you're getting your info from but it's absolutely wrong... technically. The thing is, EGA by itself only supports 2-bits per colour channel, leading to a possible 64 colours to use and ONLY supports making these changes in its high resolution 640x350 mode. HOWEVER, the EGA colours are still mapped as part of the VGA palette, so if you use any 16-colour EGA mode and modify the VGA palette data, you will effectively change those colours to anything you want within a 6-bits-per-channel colour space, same as VGA normally provides, while getting all the video memory benefits of only using 4-bits per pixel instead of 8. As for Commander Keen, nope. The fade to black is simply clever palette changes, both in the original trilogy and the later games, though to be fair, I haven't yet played Aliens Ate my Babysitter so it's possible there's a VGA fadeout trick in play there. :B

[@Ribulose15diphosphat]

@@Pixelmusement : oh, sorrry my bad. I didn't know this doesn't work in 320x200 mode. I played arround with (Int 10h/AX=1000h) (PALETTE in GW-BASIC) and indeed, in 320x200 it maps to the standart palette and in the higher resolutions it maps to 64 colour palette.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@Ribulose15diphosphat Don't worry, it's a mistake I've made too until I looked more closely into it. :B

[@MarkTheMorose]

I have Gods here from a 10-game (and 10-CD) compilation pack, 'Games Life x10 Volume Twenty', published by 'value soft'. Probably a UK-only release, I got it for 99p in a sale. It has Gods and 3 other Bitmap games: Magic Pockets, Xenon 2, and Speedball 2. I imagine they were the main draws, the other games look forgettable. It is literally one game per CD, no printed instructions, and no PDF files on the 99% empty CDs either. PC gamers were not well-served by this compilation, unless my box had missing instructions. I failed to get the game to install or run through either dosbox or Wine (I run Linux).

[@archieohare]

One of the best platformers I ever played!

[@AmyraCarter]

3:08 *_Tyrian 2000..._* Knives and Daggers are part of the same weapon type, and Shuriken is the proper Japanese term for 'Throwing Star', so it's not that misleading... I wonder...is the next game gonna be... Lemmings? :) (I love those kyuute balls of pudgy fluff! lolz)

[@namcos]

I played this on the Mega Drive and I find the controls are a bit better on that (extra buttons ftw - especially for jumping).

[@CaptainRufus]

I've got the Genesis and SNES US versions. They run a bit too fast but in game music makes up for losing Into the Wonderful.

[@eng3d]

I'm not saying that this game is not responsive because it is, but it also has copy protection. The original release has copy protection where you must write down some text from the manual and your manual doesn't have it. If the game is cracked incorrectly (or released incorrectly), then it turns insanely hard. Anyways, I have a love-hate relation with Bitmap Brothers, most of their games are unplayable, they are almost cool but they miss a single feature turning unplayable.

[@Pixelmusement]

+eng3d I compared my experience to an online playthrough of the Amiga version and saw no substantial differences in the level layouts, traps, or enemy behaviour, so I don't think the 2000 DOS release is suffering from this. Besides which, all the file dates go all the way back to the original Konami release in 1992. :P

[@Alianger]

Other issue is that loose scrolling, you can barely see what's ahead

[@simovihinen875]

Seeing as you were ready to use level warps, why wouldn't you consider eventually using Cheat Engine or something to keep yourself alive for the same purpose?

[@amandakelly7991]

can you review the first samurai

[@lutfimakarim8258]

I remember back in the days buying because of the cool cover but didn't play much because it was too damn hard.

[@TheMoogleMaster]

I remember when you played the demo version of this for shovelware diggers, also this is another one of those games I've always wanted to play but never got around to doing so.

[@Ribulose15diphosphat]

By the Way: Can you review Obitus from Psygnosis. It is also a Game ported from AMIGA to DOS what is abit buggy. For example the lighting doesn't work, the sleeping does nothing and there is an undocumented weight limit for your inventory.

[@Pixelmusement]

Requests should be eMailed to me using the eMail address found at the end of every video as it's impossible to track them properly from KZbin comments, not to mention I'm liable to miss them. :P

[@EdmondDantes224]

Wait, you can't jump straight up? You sure that's not just a control glitch? I think I've only ever played the Sega Genesis version via emulator, and then I don't remember much about it.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Jispy Moe Dantes The problem is that up-left and up-right are your jumps, so a straight up jump would have to be just straight up... but that's reserved for climbing or facing the background, which you have to do to press switches, so... yeah, no straight up jumps. :P

[@joe--cool]

Are you sure that's only 16 colors? I think it uses the exact same 64 color palette as on the AMIGA.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Joe Cool Only 16 colours "simultaneously" and yes I confirmed this. I'm almost positive some of the colours change with different worlds based on the screenshots I've seen. :B

[@joe--cool]

Fascinating. EGA mode looks pretty atrocious compared to that. I'll do a few comparisons to see if the AMIGA version also only uses 16 when I get the time. EDIT: The title screens are 16 colors on AMIGA, ST and DOS. Ingame it looks like ST and AMIGA sometimes use up to 20 colors but that might be an Emulator screenshot issue. DOSbox always consistently outputs 16. And it looks amazing on all 3 systems. Graphically Bitmap Brothers really knew what they were doing. Sorry for doubting you, Kris :)

[@Pixelmusement]

+Joe Cool No worries! I've made the 16/256 colour VGA mistake before so it's good to keep me on my toes! :B

[@CeeOmega]

This is a testament to DOS golden era of arcade games. Check Magic Pockets and Xenon2, if you haven't already covered them.

[@nemtudom5074]

Well, its not up for sale anymore on steam God damnit

[@Pixelmusement]

I looked into this and yeah, apparently the license ran out at the end of March 2022; they had it DEEPLY DISCOUNTED from early February to the very end and the official website hasn't even been updated since that sale started. Licensing can be messy and I'm going to guess the sales weren't strong enough by the end to warrant paying to renew the license. :/

[@nemtudom5074]

@@Pixelmusement Well that fking sucks Atleast konami the dicks themselves should put it up for sale

[@MarquisDeSang]

I prefer "Deep Core" for the CD32

[@antzpantz]

Interesting... you don't have the intro music to the title screen.

[@Pixelmusement]

+antzpantz Yeah... given that even the Remastered version isn't using it due to legal reasons I was NOT going to chance getting a copyright strike for it. :P

[@antzpantz]

@@Pixelmusement YUP. got to that part. That's what happens when you comment on-the-fly! 😂

[@ericvenneker]

Next week: gods? :) No one cares about this game anyway,... (Sorry, I had to)

[@Pixelmusement]

+Eric Venneker I've had my fill of this game so no, but the way it handles its passwords definitely inspired my choice for next week's Pro video. ;)

[@ericvenneker]

@@Pixelmusement I can't blame you. It would have been funny though.

[@MaximilienNoal]

Speaking of "better on the Amiga" : Transarctica / Artic Baron was better on the Amiga, too.

[@mangaas]

I remember playing this on SNES, bought it used. It's insanely bad.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

I despised Amiga leftover ports.

[@yopachi]

*click*

[@ThommyofThenn]

yes

[@StephanS]

I never really liked the game...the controls are awful and the overall gameplay is slugish. The game is also very hard and frustrating (imaging, beeing a 10 year old boy who only gets to play 30 minutes on a computer per week and wasting 25 minutes on finding out how the things in this game works) - Something i also dont like about this game is the graphics: Yes, they look good, but you cant distinguish background and foreground items. Too much color and not enough contrast... this even adds to the difficulty level

[@andersdenkend]

Don't worry, I also never made it really far. I always admired the graphics on my Amiga, but gameplay was just too slow for me.

[@Christopher-N]

It seems like I've seen a brief glimpse of this game before, and based on that viewing, I wasn't interested in the game prior to today, and I'm still not. We've all played some games that seemed rough around the edges yet we remember fondly... but I can't see _Gods_ as being one of those (in my opinion). Even Captain Kirk destroyed the computer running _Gods_ (s2e2). :P